21 Guns
by LadyNightRunner
Summary: One by one, they fall. As the last one falls, so does the reign of SOLDIER and the old ShinRa. And thus begins the age of enlightenment. Rated for implied death, extreme sorrow, and spirituality.


This came to me in the middle of the 4th Harry Potter movie. Do not ask me what in the movie prompted it, or what fueled it after the movie was over. All I know is that it was in my head and I COULD NOT SLEEP. I HAD to get it down. And here it is. Take it as you will.

* * *

After Angeal died, Zack held a small service in Midgar. There was no body to bury; according to ShinRa, Angeal was MIA, not dead. Nobody needed to know that he had been beaten down and broken, tortured and twisted into a shadow of the man he had once been. Everyone but a handful of people thought he had simply vanished, or else died in a highly classified mission. Zack knew better.

In the chapel with Aerith, he saw Angeal's face again, pale and worn, aged by pain and calmed by the darkness clouding his blue eyes. Zack cried, and Aerith held him.

Later, he and Sephiroth knelt in Aerith's church, heads bowed before a photo of Angeal they had surrounded with flowers. Candles burned in the dim twilight, flickering in the breeze when Tseng opened the doors and strode silently up the aisle. He bowed deeply to the altar, laid a branch of apple blossoms before it, and lit a stick of incense. He stood very still for awhile, murmuring softly, and then joined Zack and Sephiroth on his knees in the pews.

Zack cried then, too.

* * *

After Zack died, Cloud wandered into Midgar with a sword in his hands and blood on his face, sick with Mako poisoning and shock. It wasn't until sometime later that he even knew he was Cloud, and longer still before he sorted out what that really meant. When he finally returned to the plateau where his very identity had fractured, there was nothing there. No body. No bone. No scraps of leather or fabric.

Clumsily, Cloud stabbed the blade of his old Buster Sword into the cracked earth, pushing down until it stood on its own, gleaming in the sunlight. Zack's sword. Angeal's sword. The only remaining proof that either man had ever lived.

He took a wilted bunch of lilies from one of the saddle bags on his chocobo and laid it at the base of the sword. Then he knelt, reaching out with two fingers, and traced four letters on the cool metal. They bloomed as fog for a few brief moments, hazy characters spelling ZACK before they faded away.

On the lonely, barren plateau, Cloud cried. The baked earth beneath him soaked up his tears and left no trace of their passing.

* * *

After Cloud died, Vincent took his old SOLDIER armor and bike leathers to the mountains of Nibelheim. On a cold, rocky peak, he scraped a shallow depression in the soil and placed the clothes in it, then piled rocks over it to form a small cairn. He topped it with a smooth piece of slate.

In another depression in the unforgiving soil, he built a small fire of pine and willow wood and waited until it had burned down into a bed of glowing coals. On these coals he burned lavender and wintergreen and forget-me-not. Sitting in the cloud of bitter smoke with Tifa at his side, he chanted prayers until the coals faded into ashes.

As he prayed, Tifa hid her face in his cloak and cried until she fell asleep.

* * *

After Rufus' daughter took over the NewShinra Corporation, Rufus spent thirteen long months sifting through rubble and scrap metal for an old weapon. When he found it, he took it into his workshop and painstakingly restored it to its former glory.

On a wet, grey day, Rufus Shinra walked through the gates of Meteor Park behind six men bearing a fine wooden coffin. In his hands, he carried the sheathed sword.

In a corner of the park, an orderly line of uniformed men waited, rifles resting upright before them. Behind them, an open grave gaped darkly in the green of the lawn. The pall-bearers placed the coffin to the ground. Rufus opened it and laid the sword within it, then gently closed the lid. The pall-bearers began to lower the coffin into the grave. At a nod from Rufus, the seven soldiers turned to face the grave, lifted their rifles, and fired. Once. Twice. A third time.

As the crack of the 21st shot faded into the rain, a hush fell over the entire Planet. It lasted for just a moment, but when it lifted, it took with it a heavy mantel that had been lying over the people who inhabited it for many years. Everywhere, people found tears rolling down their cheeks and sobs hitching in their chests.

Standing beside a new grave, an elderly man smiled though his tears, turned away, and walked towards the waiting car. Though he moved very slowly, he stood straight and tall, as though a weight had been taken from him.

Two men with shovels filled in the grave, mounding the earth gently at the foot of a simple granite marker. It had no name on it, only a date of birth and one of death.

Deep within a mountain outside Nibelheim, a softly glowing thing rose from a pool of raw Mako, pulsed once, and vanished. The machinery and walkways that honeycombed the cavern it had inhabited collapsed in on itself, instantly rusted and corroded beyond saving. Around the globe, every other Mako reactor still in existence suffered the same fate.

The last SOLDIER had been laid to rest.


End file.
